Reviews:
“Whether you are a gamer or not, this documentary will surely surprise you by its exploration of the unpredictable ways politics of resistance infiltrates our media today through art, online games, and internet communications. Highly intriguing, intelligent, and entertaining,?Returning Fire?is a must-see for anyone interested in war, digital culture and computer games.”
- Rikke Schubart | Associate professor in media studies | University of Southern Denmark | Co-editor of?War Isn’t Hell, It’s Entertainment: Essays on Visual Media and the Representation of Conflict
“Violent video games are just a game – or are they? And real war is not a game – or is it???Returning Fire?is an intriguing and thought-provoking documentary about the striking ambivalence of contemporary first-person shooters and virtual warfare.”
- Tilo Hartmann | Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
“Returning Fire?is a must see for any anti-war activist. I think it should also be viewed by any parent considering buying their children a video game about war.”
-?Neil Kiernan?| V-Radio
“Returning Fire?documents not only how closely war games are able to approximate news footage of war, but also the work of activists who work to remind players of the differences being elided. Fast-moving and to the point,?Returning Fire?succinctly sums up the issues and attitudes surrounding state-of-the-art wargames, and what’s at stake in the debates about them. Highly recommended for classroom use, whether for video game studies, or discussions about war and activists’ reaction against it.”
- Mark J. P. Wolf | Assistant Professor of Communications at Concordia University, Wisconsin | Editor of?The Video Game Theory Reader
“This video documentary makes an important contribution to tackling an increasingly urgent question today: how to find new ways to ask the big questions about society, our society, its goals, values and future. While bloggers have had some impact on the political process, and tweets can light fires that require some spin doctoring to bring under control, in general the digital transition has made public space disappear and morph into online virtual networks, including those of video game play. The artists featured in this documentary challenge the inhabitants of these spaces to consider them in this way, often provoking violent and hostile reactions. They show the high stakes of interrupting or restaging the routines of combat-based entertainment for long enough to provoke the realization that the players’ screens open onto a virtual zone of militainment at the cost of closing off other encounters with the enemy other, the ‘battlezone’, the mission, and the historical reality that has informed the game design.”
- Patrick Crogan | Senior Lecturer in Film and Media and Cultural Studies | University of the West of England, Bristol, UK